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Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Of course it's about the body, the erotic body... and whose gaze is whose? And whose subjectivity is being expressed, and who is the object of her desire?

The Artist As Model, Or Her Desire In Her Gaze Of His Desire?

...and I lie back against you, you are caressing me, your arms, your shoulders, your hair, your face, I lean into, am held by, softly, and pulling me onto you, and I sigh gently in ways that you love, and you can feel my increasing desire, tightnesses, and deep blossomings, your breath, your tongue, your fingers on my skin, until I am an instrument in your hands and you are playing intoxicating music for your erotic pleasure, until I am a foaming sea of lavender for you, moaning and gyrating gently, craving your deep holy offering, crescendo of bliss, the air scented, a sweetness of grapes and hyacinths...

Sunday, June 26, 2005

(Using a stylus & tablet allows me to create a transparent layer underneath which I can layer other images, though I could have done a better drawing with a pencil... those are real love letters from years ago, and the writing in the border was from a one-time flame...)

Love Letters: On the Ethics of the Love Life of a Single Woman...

Please bear with me while I express this, sum it up, even if only for myself.

My ethical position came finally to this. I would not get involved with a man unless I had an openess to a relationship of forever. I wasn't putting time limits on it. If I thought that I'd maybe never want to see him again after one night, I would resist sleeping with him even if we were making motions towards; if I thought I might like perhaps a few weeks or a few months with someone at most, similarly I would walk away. That might all be fun while it was happening, but what if he fell in love with me, I'd only hurt him. I don't want to knowingly hurt anyone. It's a creed I live my life by, including my love life.

So, only if I could conceive of a forever would I get involved. That seems fair enough. And if he's not in that same space, and is looking at being into me for one night, a few weeks, or a few months, that's the risk I take. That's preferable to my doing it to someone else. The guy I did the "intimate friends" with got terribly hurt. Did that make me a better person? No. It made me a person who knew there was no commitment on my part and even though I told him that and did it anyway I knew there was a risk if he fell in love. And breaking up was hard to do because I became part of all the failures of love in his life. I don't want to go through it again. It wasn't a case of, 'well, we tried & it didn't work,' so much as, 'this was never anything more than a sexual diversion in my life for a short while.' They are two different scenarios. I simply chose not to do the latter any more; I can live without the sex, I can't live with hurting men who I more-or-less use, even if they agree to it.

It's my position, not anyone's else's, nor do I expect anyone else to adhere to my decision for myself based on what I can and can't live with ethically. And it's coincided with aging, so that's helped. And with increasing financial difficulties, that make me far less attractive. Etc.

But, then again, I wonder. A man of the cloth? And I a non-organized religion non-congregation spiritual rebel. And now man who lives nearly a continent away? Is it just that I'm afraid of intimacy? Or that I'm really choosy and the circumstances just happen to be the circumstances and not part of the design?

I hope this isn't too torturedly introspective for you.... I've never actually taken the time to write out my position in this free-wheeling world of free-love before. And it might explain why I'm at your doorstep free of entanglements and baggage. And why you don't need to worry about a thing, either, my dear lover.

Friday, June 24, 2005

Is this risqué? To post, I mean; no, it isn't, not at all, but, then again, I don't know... even hardworking "equality" feminists can get irate over the moon-time, it makes us different to that "one sex" white-uppermiddleclass-male everyone aspires to (except some of us don't). I'm a difference feminist. But not essentialist. Despite what it may or may not look like here. An embodiment theorist. Make of it what you will...

Thursday, June 23, 2005

The kids have spent copious hours on the phone with friends in TO & negotiations with their Dad, so I went off to a tiny Chinese company that I do long distance through, which was actually in a very expensive office tower downtown, to pay the $18. I owed (isn't it cute, owing that little), but gave them $30., they don't have payment by Internet banking, so it's usually a cheque in the mail, but when I realized their address, why, that's a trip downtown... so I've been trying to get down there all week, but yesterday afternoon was finally gorgeous & sunny.

Downtown looks like downtown but is emptier than the downtowns of big megalopolises... I walked around, enjoying the downtowness, the buildings of every shape, size, colour, from old and tiny squashed inbetween to glittering glass stretching up to the sky, the flower beds of tamed nature, the tiny parkettes with their miniscule splice of nature so vastly different to the wilderness, the close crop of streets, endless cars & the anger of drivers, and wandered down to the water, by the Shaw Tower, the reclamation project a much larger slice of land now, smelled the salt air, watched freighters go by and sea planes land, pondered the lush North Shore, the clouds rushing over the mountains, thought about life and Vancouver and what I'm doing here and am I going to stay, or go, what's possible and impossible, and eventually meandered through a bunch of streets until I found a skytrain station and went home.

The wind was blowing the clouds over the mountains, I was glad that it would be clear enough to see the Solstice moon...

Despite my childhood in the wilderness, and even 20 years of living in the crowded downtown core, the heart of the inner city in Toronto hasn't dulled my love of the beauty of cities... I enjoy hiking the streets of any downtown... even the obnoxious smells of buses doesn't bother me, and as a transit rider I laud their great number going in every direction constantly. I gaze at the dressed-up business types in expensive suits and the hair-matted, clothing-soiled druggies, the young and the old, the energetic beautiful people and the tired grey people, feeling neither desire nor disdain nor pity for anyone, enjoying the mix of people, the flow of the movement of bodies and the various shimmers of the fabrics of clothing on the streets, enjoying being part of this fabulous and strange humanity... in my urban hikes, which are not shopping trips and which can be up to five hours straight, I don't stop at coffee shops, though I wish I did... I always feel it would be nice, to stop & write at oases, and then move on, but I don't, I can't, I'm either walking, or standing staring at something, the ship-heavy inlet of ocean, a flying buttress of architecture reaching upwards like Babel, a group of vibrantly red tulips each drizzled with perfect drops of rain if you look close enough, the madness of wind and clouds mirrored in glass towers, the way birds fly through this urban landscape, fluttering down for crumbs and scraps, nesting in the eaves of inexplicably white painted stone Churches... I'm a great wanderer of cities... need to wander in way more cities too...

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Updating my life: yesterday I was offered a mat leave job in a company I really like, but not until December, which is so far away it's impossible to think about. My son has a job at a construction site today cleaning up, sweeping and vacuuming, thanks to John, my friend ZsuZsi's partner. My daughter has just gone through the halycon she always goes through before the 3300 km journey to her father's for the Summer. Why does this trip bring such anger, sadness and terror for her? As a mother do I worry unecessarily? But today is a new day and sunny; if the promised rain doesn't come, it's going to be hot. It's been cool here and I welcome and savour the heat, the way it relaxes us all.

Yes, Anais, life does shrink and expand according to one's courage, very much so, but when you're looking for work you need contacts. When you've moved to a city where you know almost no-one it's hard to find work because you have no network to draw on. That's what people are now telling me, and it makes sense. Also the 2 year mark is a make it or break it mark. I'm at the crux.

We would like to return to Toronto, and I may be able to just afford the moving costs, but need help at the other end with finding affordable housing. My children's father, who is ideally suited to the role of 'house finder,' he'll get his children back, afterall, has said a flat no. And blamed me for moving out here in the first place. None of which makes much sense, given that he'll have weekends with his kids, be close to them again. Nor can my family help, either no car, or works nights or, in the case of my mother, in her 80s and too frail. Friends? I'm not sure anyone is in a position to find housing for us to move in August. But I'll see.

Just the normal chaos of life, with its multiple decisions...

To brighten this post, because folks in the blogosphere like images, here's one I added a lens flare to and put in my sidebar to replace the one of me reading a book with blonde hair...

Now that 'light' could be a vision, a fairy whispering delightful secrets, a higher consciousness from a space zone, a light-master from a New Age dimension, a lover whom I am dancing with, an echo of the Solstice sun in the lens, or the courage that expands our world, offering a bright future. Perhaps on this morning of new awakenings, new realizations, new hope, you could tell me what you see...

*hugs xo

On Solstice, the official entry of the abundance of Summer, a solar apex, this year with a Solstice sun and moon nearly aligned, O, the fulfillment of all our dreams and wishes...

Sunday, June 19, 2005

My daughter wrote some poetry yesterday, which she shared, I love it when she shares her creative writing, and then she said I could post it. The second one is in the form that she wrote it, but the lines can be broken up to "look" more like the poetry they are. There's beauty, sadness, love. She's 14, and very, very sweet...

*

I look up at nightplanets are moving at the speed of lightand the world's expandingyou're forever fadingsee the world in black and whiteno colour or light, nothing right, nothing rightyou're part of the human race, all the stars and outer spacethe world's spinning

and no one seems to notice...

*

The leaves formed a perfect drop, a drop of the sun, rested upon its self, held together by mixes of light, of sky and rain, 50 million leaves, they swirl around me, they dance with my love, sing with forever beauty, in the sunset, they break the world, the universe trapped inside a city, and no one seems to notice, but me, and your world is all the sun sees, hidden by darkness, the white shadows revealed and I'll wait for them, until my days are done, history is in the past, it was somewhere and then it was lost, and no one seems to notice, but me, so I'll float through my memories, cause they're all I have, everyday I create a memory, every second of life, could be my forever memory, so I'll always have a place to be, inside of me, I'm creating my world as it fades, and I can't hold on, and no one seems to notice but me, we're swallowed in the sea, and no one seems to notice but me.

Friday, June 17, 2005

I need to put a disclaimer in here. I am the author but not the character. There are points of similarity with my life but "The Move" is also fictionalized and parts are made up. It is necessarily more brutal than my life is for the purpose of drama. Since blogging is largely lifewriting, one does need to clarify when one moves into fiction. I am in crisis, yes, and am letting that be a diving board... but I am not writing in the confessional mode; rather this is the imagination of a life...

***

THE MOVE

She stares uncomprehendingly at the Notice To End Tenancy, holds it in her hand like an entropic text. It is composed of financial hieroglyphics and it has a greater power than all of the magical texts in her library. Its final incantation is homelessness.

She sips coffee, looking at the light of the clouded sky, how silvery it is, and wonders what will become. She snaps a picture of a fading rose on the window sill, and transfers it to the computer where she draws fiery lines like fireflies leaving trails on the soft pink lips in the core. The stylus a burning ember, she sears the tips of the labyrinth of folds that the petals are while she scores them with light. Tracing the delicate trails with her lit sparkler, is there a path that she could perceive if she could only fathom it in the dying fragrance of the blossom? Perhaps this tracing is an oracle of prophetic signs on dusty, fading petals that can be read even as they are crumpling inwards, and dropping to the floor.

If you go deliberately into the uncertainty of the darkness will you find the light? Will you find answers to the direction that is hidden but already opening out? Or is there no direction but what is willfully asserted onto the crumpling inwards and emblazoned in the clouds of the morning sky like a scroll of truth?

Even as she flees she is being drawn into the molten core of what is dissolving. But then she's given to drama, especially after a sleepless night and the worry that encroaches her vision like the smudged glass of the window she looks out of.

She finishes her large mug of bitter, aromatic espresso coffee and takes it to the kitchen to rinse. There are no answers, only questions. This is the mantra.

The house is on the market. It has come to this, and she is moving, but does not know where she shall go. Her home is crumbling and she is losing her beloved abode. This brings a stream of thoughts on the protection of shells, exoskeletons, abodes. How is it to live without a shell of protection? Shall she live under the open sky emblazoned with the starlit lanterns of the Milky Way? What is a home, a house, a place to live? And how is that an expression of the architecture of our souls? These are the questions she begins with as she starts the arduous process of packing up her house.

Or has she already left, already fled into exile, already been broken by the isolation that strangers are accorded, and is trying to return?

Has the breaking apart of what is warm, enclosing, protective already happened, and was there a fleeing of the shards of that broken shell for a new place only to turn and re-seek them?

And where does the compass point now? How is she to read it when its heavy glass is fogged and the pointer spins uncontrollably? If there is no centre, how can the world revolve? Without a home, a grounding, what orbit does one spin in? Empty boxes pile up in all the rooms, some still flattened, some already made, waiting to be filled with the accumulation of hers and her children's lives.

How many lives does a cat have? How many times has she landed on her feet, and has she run out of chances?

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Woke soon after dawn, lay in bed for an hour, wishing direction would become clear. An hour hugging my soft, clean, silky dog, who was curled in a ball, sleeping, who I shampooed yesterday after her swim in the lake in the park. I lay in the early morning light, wishing that what's possible would manifest clearly. I can feel myself walking the hot, polluted streets of Toronto; I can feel my reunion with my friends and dancing at The Move on Friday nights; I can hear the long conversations with my family; I see myself walking onto campus, returning to York University. It all feels very happy. That perhaps I was exhausted, at the end of what I could cope with when I moved out here and now after two years I am mended, renewed, ready to return and continue on. The return is becoming so real in a feeling-sense and I'm not sure why. Funds for a move back aren't here/there/anywhere at present. And no temp work this week. Stress. Though I did have 6 hours of unbroken sleep, a gift. And as I sip coffee, looking out at the clouded day of silvery light, I wonder what will become, and I began taking pictures of a fading rose, drawing fiery lines in its core, like fireflies leaving trails on the soft pink lips…

Monday, June 13, 2005

I took this photo the day before the only possible permanent job I've had in a year ended due to problems with location, there was no bus service outside of rush hour and it was a 5 hour a day position, it was right before my birthday on March 7th too... That path goes up past the high school and I walk it nearly every night with my dog... Not a great photo, and I'm into frames these days (sorry!), but it was on the edge of... O, those Cherry blossoms!

On the Vision Quest/Fasting

The process of processing takes its own time according to its own rhythms and necessities. The vision quest/fast I did in 1998 on my abandonment issues was very difficult and quite emotionally painful if I recall, but it did resolve those issues to the extent of releasing me from being tied in an unhealthy way to a fear of rejection. Because of my childhood issues, whenever I receive a 'rejection' my response is to over-give, whether it's being extra nice, or a poem, or buying something, and it's usually an inappropriate reaction. I saw that in many ways it was the central crux of my more important relationships, and that I was still trying to 'please' an 'abusive' parent - over and over, living out a primal drama of my childhood. I needed to break the hold of this pattern in my psyche, and one of the ways I did it was to undertake a vision quest where I struggled with this issue, the power of rejection over me. I know my quest was successful because I am no longer attracted to people who are explosive and mean on the one hand, and distant and cold and rejecting on the other (was that ever really true, it sounds so incredible now). Whatever unsound hooks there were in me from my survival techniques as a child were undone, cast away. The vision quest to free myself of my abandonment issues was successful, but it took a few years for me to see that, indeed, a new pattern of relationships had established itself in my life that was much healthier and happier. I developed a strength that enables me to turn my back on, and walk away from, scenarios that would send me back to my helpless childhood.

So I know that working deeply on yourself with determined intent does pay dividends.

We each heal ourselves differently.

My favoured last-resort way is quite difficult, I suppose. Although a 2 - 3 day fast is not that rigorous. But it works for me, and that is what is important.

Let me say that even with a full 3 day/3 night fast, I have never lost any weight. With the 2 days that I fasted last week I may have lost 2 lbs which, after last night's roast chicken (soaked in a brine solution for 4 hours, covered with bacon, stuffed with wild and long grain rice, roasted to succulence) with all the trimmings and my daughter's decadent chocolate cake, well I may have even gained. I would never recommend a fast to lose weight, in other words. And, anyway, then you might get into a binge/purge routine and be worse off than ever. Weight loss is another issue altogether. I don't view it as part of the process I've undergone. The only way it could be would be if I wanted to discover the deeper reasons why I needed to overeat, if that was my problem (it isn't), and heal them at a very deep level in my being.

So with seeing if I gained any insights from my vision quest last week, yes, only one seemingly innocuous nugget, that I'm looking in the wrong area for work (clerical/reception), which was great to know, like huh, and in what area then should I look? Fasts don't follow a question/answer format; it's all process, moving energy along a trajectory, discovering the path as you go.

I'm still discovering this one: how to financially support my family while I continue with my writing and image-making/painting. And answers are coming, slowly, and with effort, in the ways I need to change my attitudes about this overwhelming problem, since I haven't been able to find full time work in a year of continual looking.

Teaching came out quite strongly, though I have no specific academic credentials (besides a couple of degrees) and am thinking of what I need to do to move into the area of education. But that's long term and down the road.

Immediate answers I don't have yet.

Maybe by tomorrow I will, maybe not. I've starved myself open, though. It's like all the cards have been thrown in the air, and who knows how or where they will land.

This post has been very long and reflective, thank you for bearing with me, and I do hope you've managed to take something away from all this that enriches your own life. That most of all. xo

Sunday, June 12, 2005

(Sorry this is such a long post, but I just added a small pic from that night at the end, surely it look like I've come through the zone, though still no clear directions...)

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

...so the big riptide rolling my way is that I've been looking steadily for a steady job for an entire year now without success, and temp work is not cutting it, and I can't hold out any longer... even a year at such an income level is nothing short of a miracle... and while I'm great with sacrifice, I must say it's been no fun at all... I finally decided that I'd like to apply to the Arts-Based Research Program in Graduate Education for 2006 but it doesn't look like I will be able to manage to stay here in Vancouver... with some money that's coming my way soon, not enough, not barely enough, I may be able to move us back to Toronto where the job situation may be no better but where my family lives and where I have many friends... I've been very isolated since moving here 2 years ago, which, in a paradoxical ways, has been healing, a watershed in my life, time to remember who I am, though without financial stability, and not ideal by any means... looking for work pretty intensively though and still no job, despite so much effort to find something, anything... is it time to leave, then?... even though I may just be able to cover moving expenses, I won't have enough for storage or 1st and last month on a place, so I'm stressing even more than I have been all year... it's been a very difficult year, only mitigated by all you wonderful people in the on-line journal world, our blogging heaven, and the creative outlet that this place is... it's very hard for me to talk about difficult things that I'm going through while I'm going through them, usually I withdraw and only speak of what went on later, so I am trying to be more open about my difficulties even as I am swirling in the midst of them...

much love...

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Monarck, that beautiful poet and model, is talking about a fast she currently on. I've been considering a fast for a couple of months. With low-ish blood pressure ~ now is that because of the yoga? I heard that people who do yoga have low blood pressure & that it's normal? I'd like to hear that it's normal... ~ when I fast I can't really keep up a normal day. But that's okay, because when I fast it's because I'm doing a "vision quest."

Often, when I had a cottage on Georgina Island in Lake Simcoe, a Chippewa Reserve, a beautiful spot only about an hour from Toronto, I would go for vision-quest fasts. Always with a specific quest in mind. One time I wanted to struggle with and overcome my abandonment issues, which come from my childhood and my Dad's frequent absence on business trips, but which were paralyzing me in my relationships, and so I fasted it out.

The first night I travelled there, by ferry and car, and spent the evening in front of a roaring fire playing a Native drum, for hours on end, calling in the spirits of guidance, sending out negative energies, whatever felt and seemed right. Looking out over a wide expanse of lake, with a silver maple forest to one side, a neighbour over a ways to the other, I could make as much noise as I liked. So I drummed long and hard and loud.

The next day the fasting continued, only drinking water, and journaling. Any visions, insights, feelings, anything at all got written down as it was happening. As I went deeper and deeper into hunger I had to let go of my attachments, wants, needs, desires, until there was no more craving, no more pain, no more suffering, until I floated free in a state of mind approaching light speed. I've done quite a bit of shamanic work in these states of mind, helping those who've passed on reach the vistas of enlightenment they seek, or whatever (my novel explores this mythology). It's a type of spirituality I am drawn to, and has its roots in the African tribal spirituality of my childhood.

Anyway, I can't think of a single quest that wasn't successful in the terms that I sought. I've learnt how to be secure in myself and not thrown into tempestuous crumbling when I'm abandoned. I've birthed creativity. I've found a deep and abiding connection to a spiritual reality that keeps me grounded and loving in the world.

Not without effort, mind you. When you fast, starve your body, you are pitting yourself against death itself, the threat of death by starvation, though, of course, you never go that far, only far enough to bring everything to the point of relinquishment so that inner change may occur.

At least, I don't fast to purify my body of toxins, but to purify my mind of restraints that don't serve me or my life or those I love.

So, I am considering fasting to find out why I don't have a job. If the issue is with me, I need to discover what is going on and why. If I am looking in the wrong areas for work, or don't understand my path and the ways I may make an income to live on that are better suited to my talents, energies, drives, ambitions, gifts and desire to give, then I need to stop, delve inwards, and change some conscious attitudes that are causing problems so a better flow can occur. Or maybe I'm in this position because I need to make a radical departure. Right now everything is bottled up. It's a terrifying moment.

If I can manage it, I'll stop eating tomorrow, and go through until Sunday. If I get a temp job, obviously I'll have to stop the fast. I may try to blog it through; can't promise on that one, but we'll see.

This is a powerful way to bring myself into alignment.

Thursday, June 9, 2005

I realize that I've actually been fasting since yesterday around noon or so if I don't count my 2oz of wine last night, I suppose -:). I'm definitely feeling the Day 2 feeling, and couldn't figure it out. Don't know how far I'm getting, but I'm quite light-headed and overly sensitive to sensual input... light is weirdly bright, sound too crisp... and hunger has transformed into a muted distant roar in my gut, I don't feel it... oh, and my tongue feels coated... my head feels, well, lightheaded, sort of enthralled in an inner drama - (of the digestive system which is signalling all over the place, and getting nothing)... all signs of fasting...

Not feeling any breakthroughs in the way I structure myself yet ~

Though I am busy undoing myself from the inside out. I've been through my entire financial history, realizing all the places where I've made mistakes, and the welcome gifts that sometimes emerge... the universe, on the whole, hasn't been too bad a place to hang out for a lifetime.

But I would like now to have a half decent income, that security. Certain areas aren't working out, I can see that, and perhaps ought to shift my focus elsewhere. I am busy clarifying what it is that I do want...

Don't know about moving back to Toronto, don't have quite enough money, but, well.... we'll see what transpires~

O, it's so silly, all of it! But so very, very serious.

I continue~

Friday, June 10, 2005

Some people can fast and carry on with their normal lives, I can't. It's a beautiful state of mind for clarity and honesty because you're somewhere in the deep centre where there is no incessant chatter. Fasting has never been a state where I could carry any anger or bitterness or any of the stories I tell myself to get through the day sometimes. It's so pure. Just the dizzying body and the spirit, and opening yourself into a better understanding of the self and the world/in the world. I was becoming quite weak, mostly resting, and more light-headed and beginning to see radiant angels about me, hovering, moving gracefully, their garments rich and soft like the brushed clouds of the setting sun, their wings gleaming and folded, soft, silky long hair, Pre-Raphaelite angels, tenderly caring for me, helping me to align my perceptions, to understand, to have deeper, clearer vision...

But my kids were finding me too strange. Sigh. What's a spiritual quest again, Mom? Today is shopping day, too, and I knew I wasn't going to make it out to the supermarket by transit and back unless I ate. My son often does the shopping, he's great that way, but we need a lot of stuff today...

I broke my fast, after 48 hours, or 2 days, with a large, granny smith apple, the juice so tart and so sweet on my throat; a large mug of English orange pekoe breakfast tea, a blend of leaves from Ceylon, Assam, Kenya and Indonesia, the very best, sweetened, with milk, soothing; flavourful white extra-old cheddar cheese in a buttered white-flour tortilla wrap; and then a curried lamb chop, which was slowly cooked with onions, garlic, celery, apple, ginger and Patak's hot madras curry sauce that I defrosted in the microwave and gobbled down!

It's like the city was silent, in moon-lit revery, a hush of magic, and the stillness has been broken and the day has begun and the traffic is moving again.

Monday, June 06, 2005

...I wish I knew the point at which one can definably say... I mean there is a moment where the bulk of the direction of something has reached critical mass and cannot be held back and flows over... and in the flowing over, there is a definable something to say, a concrete fact, it is going in this direction, this is the decision made, this is what is happening now... always before the movement towards is the setting of plans, an openness or closure to, a way to slide the events in a certain direction... what is it that decides what direction something will flow in but your decisions about directions... most of life seems to work this way, at least it does for me... it's all various energy patterns, flowing and interweaving, creating and subsiding, connecting and sliding through and disconnecting and drawing back from... like a vast dynamic tableaux, a web of points of singularity all flickering and creating lines between each other according to a complex dance created by each point of singularity, each consciousness deciding its direction within the parameters and variables that are viable... choices constantly being made, from the time we rise to the time we sleep... holding patterns, keeping ourselves together, making crossings, living on thresholds... and always motivated by deep inner inclinations that move like underwater currents directing things to crash and break on the rocks or lap gently upon the sandy beaches... sometimes we float along on the same trajectory without change and other times we radically switch directions... sometimes we are forced, by the general field of connections, or lack of them, to make choices we don't want to make... and this is where I am.

Sorry to be so mysterious, but a riptide is sweeping through my life...

Sunday, June 05, 2005

Playing today with a too-dark image from a few days ago when I needed a new profile photo---lightening it, seeing what's in the shadows, and discovered a way to irradiate a photo with blue spotlights: I found the blue lights intriguing even as I wrapped myself in them doing and undoing many possibilities. And I wonder if this process of enfolding and illumining in blue light is teaching me something mystical or perhaps silly? Some humour might be apropos these days, as a way to release the tension of radical shifts in the underlayers of my life. It seems that when a woman does something radical to her hair, she's about to do something radical to her life too. Major transformations are in process in the woman who resides over here, at Rubies In Crystal, I suspect... I wonder what will emerge from the chrysalis of blue lights? It is an interesting process that I've been through recently, extreme sensitivity, a withdrawal inwards, the depths where one retreats to, not knowing what is going on or which way to turn, desperations folding in on one, and the way the cocoon that you didn't know had grown around you begins to crack, it's fearful, those blinding splits of needles of light, and not knowing what will emerge, something saddened by experience, weighted, or beautiful, and that can fly in freedom...

About Me

BRENDA CLEWS is a poet, painter, dancer, video-maker, mother, friend, muse, mystery-maker, a lover, a solitary, believer in divine sybaritism. 'While we all have an instinctual sense of what 'art' is, it's from a 'Weltanschauung' that is itself art because it is part of the process of conscious life in a world that is a work of art.

Our universe's creativity is beyond our wildest imaginings.'

Brenda was born in Zimbabwe in the then small mining town of Chinhoyi. When she was two her father, D. Richard Clews, who was a geologist, moved her and her mother to Kafue National Park in Zambia, then the largest game park in Africa, as he joined a mining team looking for copper, and where her two brothers were born.

She cites her early years spent in the jungle, barefoot, living in a compound of mud huts, with many wild animals and the wonderful Ndembu people for her deep resonance with the beauty, strangeness and brilliance of the tribal mind and the natural world.

After the time in the jungle came a year in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and then her father took the family to England where he obtained a doctorate in Geochemistry and accepted a position in Canada. Brenda has lived in Canada since then.

Brenda has a full-length collection of poetry, Tidal Fury, with Guernica Editions, 2016. She has a forthcoming novella, Fugue in Green, with Quattro Books, 2017. LyricalMyrical Press published her chapbook, the luminist poems, in 2013. She hosts Poetry & Music Salons in Toronto.

She has edited university textbooks and creative writing, taught writing, written articles for newspapers, taught Kundalini Yoga, done temporary office work, and dog sitting, while maintaining a reclusive lifestyle of writing and painting. She raised two wonderful children as a single mother. She has a degree in Fine Arts and abandoned a PhD in English Lit many years ago.

Brenda has had solo art shows at York University (2000), Q Space (2013) and Urban Gallery (2014), and been in a number of group art shows including 'Birthtales' (1992) at A Space, 'Birth2' (2004) at Ayer Lofts in the US, '5 By 5' (2013) at The Gladstone Hotel, Yellow House Gallery (2014), SuperWonder Gallery (2016) and Arcadia Gallery (2016). Her artwork has appeared in 'Addiction to Perfection' and as two journal covers and in a poster for ‘ARM Magazine.’

Her poetry has been published in print journals, like 'Tessera,' and 'ARM Journal,' and on-line at sites, including 'Qarrtsiluni,' 'Mothers Movement Online,' and 'The Browsing Corner' (she is not good at submitting her work). She presented papers yearly at conferences at York University and OISE on the maternal body from 2001-2006. Her video poetry has been featured at 'CrossBridge' (an international multidisciplinary journal), and 'Moving Poems ('best poetry videos on the web').

She is a multi-media artist whose approach to a topic may include poetry, painting, theory, dance, recordings, and video. Brenda's oeuvre focuses on the plethora, the multiple callings, the obsessive muse, the prism rather than the spotlight, or on multiple spotlights. She writes, "Where else do you flee? How do you combine yourself?"